Author: Fiori Tracker Team

SAP Solution Manager provides various tools and methods for implementing and maintaining both SAP and customer solutions. The Solution Documentation model is based on a hierarchical structure, which uses a solution as the single, central point of access for all Solution Documentation content.

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The process of documenting applications (and/or business processes) is a very important issue for organizations that use IT solutions for providing their business core services. It is also necessary during the Fiori apps implementation. SolDoc could be a good tool to store final documentation as a result of the work of several functional consultants.

With the Most frequently used apps function of the Fiori Tracker, SAP S/4 HANA implementation, that project manager is getting, is a perfect overview of how the UAT is progressing.

Please, take a look at the screenshot of this function:

Note the columns with the application start count:

In total (“Total”)

For last calendar week (“Last calendar week”)

For the current day (“Today”)

With a large number of the applications to be tested, the information, on whether any user has run the app, gives a good indicator of how the testing is progressing.

The function has a filleting for:

Functional area

Application type

So, it is a valuable source of information for every manager to see, what is the activity for different functional areas. The statistic can be generated per business line and used for status meetings on test progress. It also gives a glance at how performing the tests team members are occupied at the time.

The records for each run are collected as long, as the plugin is enabled. Also, all other statistic analyses can be performed. The statistics can also take under the consideration the data from other aspects covered with the Fiori Tracker like:

We have designed Fiori Tracker components to enable flexible installation options. Depending on your SAP landscape setup and your organization constraints, you can deploy Fiori Tracker in the way that suits your project the best. The recommended Fiori Tracker architecture is shown below:

Fiori Tracker architecture

The tool can also be set to work directly on the SAP Gateway without the SAP Solution Manager – find all deployment options in section “Deployment options” of the Fiori Tracker manual.

Grzegorz Malewski will describe the challenges that come with the governing implementation of a large number of the SAP Fiori applications, and the free tool that helps to ease those challenges called Fiori Tracker.

Fiori Tracker serves as living documentation and a central registry of apps that are being implemented or supported in your S/4 HANA project. With the Fiori Tracker whole team knows what apps are in scope and how they should be configured. It provides one view to manage the entire set of the Fiori apps. With Fiori Tracker the team gets one place to collect what was agreed with functional stream leads while enforcing naming conventions and avoiding duplication.

Typically each S/4 HANA implementation has a number of huge Excel sheets containing application details and its assignments to catalogs, groups, and roles. Unfortunately, these sheets get often out of sync causing most of the parts not to be up-to-date. Once they are out of date handling any catalog or role hanges becomes a nightmare.

That is how typical Excel sheet for grouping and catalog assignments for SAP Fiori Launchpad applications looks like

As SAP Fiori developer or SAP basis specialist who, in most cases, is in charge of provisioning Fiori launchpad changes, you are the one responsible for keeping apps in order. You have two choices: either spend the time maintaining spreadsheets, or spend even more time discussing, with project team members, how to maintain them so they can come up with consistent requests for changes. Either way – you end up spending more time on not doing what you are specialized in, which can be very frustrating.

Fiori Tracker takes away this repetitive, administrative task by presenting how the existing apps are linked with the existing catalogs and what impact the changes will have to the catalogs. You get the view on the history of the changes that get logged with date and time stamp each time the change is made.

Each set of the implemented SAP Fiori apps will require grouping them into the Fiori launchpad catalogs and groups. In projects with functional streams, a number of functional leads (3-7) come up with their set of groups depending on their stream users needs.

The consistent naming convention, that is shared between the streams, will speed up the process of dealing with catalogs and groups later when other team members, like the SAP Fiori developers or Basis specialists, start handing them in the process of support and maintenance.

To address that need Fiori Tracker has a function of enforcing the naming conventions. By default, it enforces a fixed prefix:

ZC_* for catalogs and ZG_* for groups.

It can be also set to enforce the stream linkage in the following form:

ZC_P2P_*, ZC_O2C_*.

All this enables speedy navigation in other tools like SAP Fiori designer. Entering a fixed prefix allows listing all custom catalogs and business groups. Extending it with the stream name limits the list to a particular stream which later, when different team members manage the catalog, proves to be very handy.

To have the Groups ready Fiori Launchpad requires effort from several parties:

Functional specialist – for requirements

SAP Fiori for Fiori Launchpad – configuration

SAP Basis specialist- for authorization roles setup

again, Functional – for unit testing

As a result, the whole process takes a number of stages, a lot of time, and might lead to a situation, where some of the groups are not unit tested. It is very easy to end up with the case where the groups, that were not earlier checked, are reported as groups that have issues. For example:

certain apps are missing

apps are not starting properly

Title or descriptions are different than expected

Fiori Tracker helps to avoid these situations and have a group set up ready in one shot, without any surprises.

Here is how:

1. For each Fiori app in the scope of the project, there is an information record with general data

So, for starters – you can see whether the app is already included in the scope of the project. If it has an entry in the Fiori Tracker, the app was earlier agreed to be included in the scope and configured.

List of applications in the scope filtered by the application name

If the missing app is not in the scope it requires additional steps and will take more time to set up, comparing to just enabling the app that is already in place.

You can see when was it included in the scope (give a chance to identify latecomers and allows to control scope creep), provisioned in each system and how it is configured.

General view of Fiori application details

2. “To be” documentation for Fiori launchpad groups

3. Information who is responsible for testing and whether the test was done

One of the major goals of project management is the clarity on responsibility.

Fiori Tracker makes it crystal clear who is responsible for each SAP Fiori application available through SAP Fiori Launchpad. The information is available in seconds directly from the application itself (with Fiori Launchpad plugin), or through the application card view.

All applications in scope can be found with a Google-like search function. The responsibility is determined based on the application stream assignment: Each application is assigned to the stream, each stream has named functional consultant assigned. Applications that belong to P2P stream have P2P functional consultant set as responsible and so on, depending on how you decide to set up your streams. This way in case of changes, in a functional consultant position, the assignment is passed through the stream assignment, and there is no need to update attributes of the application itself. Same assignment rule is applied for Fiori Launchpad business catalogs, groups, and roles.

During the implementation phase, you will find this function useful whenever you will need to:

Set the scope for implementation, testing or for go-live readiness for each stream

Assign resolving issues resulting from testing the application

Make decisions on assignment to roles, Fiori launchpad business catalogs or groups

Each SAP S/4 HANA implementation project team member or support team member conducts the tests. On a daily basis, each specialist runs numerous test cases. Whenever it is testing during official test phases, or replicating the issue that the end user encountered, there is a need to access the system with the user, that has the respective business roles.

As Fiori Tracker holds the repository of all business roles it is also the best place to keep the link of the roles to the test users.

This simple view, that is available in 2 clicks, saves a lot of time as the SAP team members get the correct uses in seconds.

There are two main phases in the SAP systems life cycle when gathering feedback on how SAP Fiori applications are performing: implementation and support. In both cases, quick and accurate problem reports save the time spent on issue solving. This is especially the case for SAP Fiori applications where nontechnical users or even implementation […]

There are two main phases in the SAP systems life cycle when gathering feedback on how SAP Fiori applications are performing: implementation and support. In both cases, quick and accurate problem reports save the time spent on issue solving. This is especially the case for SAP Fiori applications where nontechnical users or even implementation team members might not know how to precisely identify the application that they have problems with.

To address that issue we have prepared the plugin for SAP Fiori Launchpad that enables users to report problems directly from the application that is having problems.

The plugin is a part of the Fiori Tracker tool and uses the information collected in its tables to automatically identify the running SAP Fiori application and populate the contents of the Jira ticket with the relevant technical information.

With the press of one button user is presented with a prefilled issue title with the precise name of the SAP Fiori application together with its technical id. In the description field, the user is only required to provide the nature of the problem that he or she encountered.

In addition, the plugin automatically collects the screenshot and allows the user to decide whether to automatically include it in the created Jira issue.

With Fiori Tracker and the Fiori Reporter your team will love the ease of recording Jira tickets while testing!